A small invention made from seawater could greatly improve the development of mobile phones and computers

Lithium-ion batteries are found in many electronic devices. Researchers have now succeeded in producing such batteries from new material. This is not only significantly cheaper, but the devices also have significantly more power.

You can find rechargeable batteries in many electronic devices. These are installed in your mobile phones or laptops so that you have energy when you are on the go to use the things at all. But rechargeable batteries are considered expensive and the battery life is limited by the size and design of the batteries.

A team of researchers has now made a small but important discovery that could significantly change the future of rechargeable batteries.

New battery is made from sea water

What have researchers done now? At the University of Sydney, an exciting discovery has been made about rechargeable batteries (via sydney.edu.au). Under the direction of Dr. Shenlong Zhao at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, a battery was made from new material.

The researchers explain that they rely on sodium-sulphur. This is a type of molten salt that can be extracted from seawater. This is much cheaper to produce than lithium-ion batteries and can be found almost anywhere there is seawater.

In addition to the costs, another problem was solved at the same time. Because sodium-sulphur batteries (NaS) have had the disadvantage that they can store little energy and have a short shelf life (few cycles).

The paper goes on to say that a chemical process (pyrolysis) improved the reactivity of sulfur and the change of state (reversibility) between sulfur and sodium. This means that the new battery has a high capacity and a significantly longer service life even at room temperature. The researchers speak of four times the battery capacity.

A new battery could even come onto the market soon

Why was the product developed? The research team developed the product to provide a high-performance solution for large-scale renewable energy storage systems while significantly reducing operational costs. This is how dr. Zhao in an interview:

Our sodium battery has the potential to drastically reduce costs while providing four times the storage capacity. This is a significant breakthrough for the development of renewable energy, which while reducing costs over the long term, has so far faced several financial hurdles to enter the market.

What’s next? The batteries were first successfully manufactured and tested at the University of Sydney chemical engineering facility. Researchers now plan to improve and then commercialize the recently manufactured batteries.

Great progress has also been made in other areas. Researchers have tested a new material that could make GPUs much faster in the future. But there is probably still a long way to go until then:

A small discovery could make new graphics cards and processors much faster than ever before